Would you believe I’ve only ever been to one New Year’s Eve party in my life? (I think it was 1983 or 1984). I always think everybody else in the world is celebrating except me (though I know that’s not true). Anyway, there isn’t really anyone I want to celebrate with – well, I can think of quite a few people, actually, but not any I have any hope of seeing this evening.
I was awake from 1:30 to 5 last night, I wrote 5 pages in my notebook, thinking about new year’s resolutions. The problem with them is that, because they have this arbitrary time demarcation, it’s as though they’re set up to fail, as though, as soon as you’ve lapsed once, that’s it and you might as well forget it. Not that I haven’t actually succeeded in keeping any, because as a matter of fact I have. In 2000 I made a resolution to write at least a side of A4 a day (on average), which I kept up for the whole year, and in fact have (more or less) kept up ever since, only now it’s 500 words (which is about 2 A4 pages of longhand). But then of course I get to the stage of thinking – why the hell am I dong this, why am I spending my time and effort this way when nothing I write is publishable?
Well, I don’t really like this business of reflection and looking forward – too much scope for thinking about failure and lack of direction. The notebook I was writing in last year happened to be the one I wrote my ‘goals for the year’ in, which was a bit discouraging.
But I was thinking about hope the other day, and about Greg Lake’s ‘I believe in Father Christmas’, which is my absolute favourite Christmas song, because of the last verse: ‘I wish you a hopeful Christmas,/I wish you a brave new year./All anguish, pain and sadness,/Leave your heart and may your road be clear’. Because you can’t run away from disillusionment and disappointment, from anguish, pain and sadness, or they’ll just keep running after you. The only way through is to face up to them and go through them and find the hope which lies behind them, as it lay in the bottom of Pandora’s box, because it is always better to face the truth with hope than to live a happy delusion.
A happy (and brave) 2008 to us all.

PS I don’t capitalise ‘happy new year’ (unlike Merry Christmas), because the wishes apply to the whole year, not just New Year’s Day – even more irritating is when people say ‘Happy New Year’s’(AND put the stress on ‘New’ – aaarrgghhh!!!)